On Wednesday night the radio show Roots Rock Rebel hosted one of Punks Against Apartheid’s founders, Alex Billet, for an interview about the origins of PAA, our campaign to get Jello Biafra not to play in Tel Aviv, and where we’re going from here. The discussion spanned from the boycott in South Africa to the punk scene in Israel. From the interview:

One of the most common arguments trotted against boycott is “well, there’s bad policies everywhere, why are you just singling out Israel?” I think that’s a valid question in some ways. But really it comes down to solidarity – straight up. This movement is really rooted in the 2005 call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions that came out of any civil society group of note within Palestine and from Arab communities within the ’48 borders.

…

This [cultural boycott] is not about silencing voices. As a matter of fact, it’s about the voices of Palestinians being heard much more than they currently are.

You can find the entire show from Wednesday night archived here (or here – just in case). The interview itself starts around the 36-minute mark, but it’s worth listening to the whole show if you have the time, especially if you need your daily dose of ska-punk.

Roots Rock Rebel airs every Wednesday night from 10pm-midnight on CKUT 90.3 FM in Montreal. It also streams live at www.ckut.ca. Roots Rock Rebel host & DJ, Aaron Lakoff, is a PAA member.

In other news, thanks to the efforts of a couple of generous community members, our points of unity have already been translated into Arabic and Korean. We’re expecting translations into Hebrew, French, and Turkish shortly. If you can help out by translating the points of unity into any other language please get in touch!

She began talking almost before I said hello and I found help for essay her words difficult to comprehend